Election Night: The Good, the Bad and the... What Was Up With Diane Sawyer?!

The endless campaigning is over, and Barack Obama has defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney to win a second term as President of the United States. Of course, the frenzied reporting Tuesday night of exit poll numbers, voting tallies and demographic trends shone a glaring spotlight on the stars of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and the news divisions of CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox.

We stayed glued to our TV sets to assess the best and worst of Election Night coverage — and present it to you in handy photo gallery form. So click through below to get our picks for everything from the night’s Best Map to the Worst Manners to the Sauciest Interruption.

And no need to thank us: With NCIS, Parenthood, New Girl and Dancing With the Stars all taking the night off, what else were we supposed to do with our evening?

CNN really needs to figure out how to do the technology thing in a way that doesn’t make them look like they’re trying too hard to be painfully hip and cool. Oy. And Karl Rove and Sarah Palin are just obnoxious and really need to stop talking.
Anywho, as for the actual election results: beyond thrilled that Akin and Mourdock lost, they deserve it after the idiotic, deeply offensive and disturbing things they said. Pleased to see Maine and Maryland have made same sex marriage legal as well. And VERY happy with the presidential outcome. Breathing a huge sigh of relief and feeling pretty good right about now.

Agreed, I kept praying they’d take the touch screens away from John King, all the zooming in and out made me dizzy and Wolf Blitzer was a little too over-the-top with Balance of Power, Exit Poll results and Standby for a Projection LOL

3. Best use of a Famous Building, including the window-washing rigs. If the results had been more contentious, they could have incorporated the Midtown dangling crane to represent the 2012 version of a hanging chad. ;-)

You missed after Fox News Channel interviewed a Obama spokesperson (around 8 CT) they said that while he was talking it all sounded annoying. But they backtracked and said since his audio kept cutting out that’s what REALLY made it sound annoying.

As opposed to 400 million dollars spent and getting, what?
1. Different President
2. Same divided Congress
3. Same divided country
How anyone can be happy with that is beyond me. On either side. Let’s face it, this was a lose-lose election. I’m not buying Obama’s hope and change, but I sure as hell didn’t buy Romney’s either.

No, if you are going to keep Obama, who I don’t support, you might as well go all in and elect a Congress that can pass legislation that he will sign. Not vote through 4 more years of the same gridlock and grandstanding. I may not care for the guy, but at some point we have to pick a direction and just go and see what happens. I thought Romney was a POOR choice for the Republicans as well and so did many other Republicans. So now we all have to live through 4 more years of the same crap. It’s useless.

Yeah…the fact that the congress may keep on blocking important decision does not look promising BUT it’s Obamas last presedential term so he finally might cut the cookie-cutter decision making…at least that’s what I think/hope he has been planning to do.

Dems have the white house and EXPANDED their hold on the Senate — the House is still REP. but the HOUSE is ALL UP FOR GRABS/RE-ELECTED EVERY TWO YEARS. If we are going to break gridlock and put it all in one parties hands – then voting the House to the Dems in the midterm election would be the way to fly. They would have two years (well really a year before they have to start campaigning again) to do something, (and given the Prez can’t run again- he would have a free hand to push them to move). Then IF we don’t like what the Dems do after the Midterms – we could erase it all in the general election bu voting gridlock back or the other party in.

And the Republicans expanded their hold on the House. I don’t think you understand that no legislation can go through Congress with each party having a strangle hold on one part of it. I’m not a Democrat at all, but we can’t afford even 2 more years of bickering and gridlock.

I watched the CBC coverage here in Canada and it was great! Tons of great insight and analysis, plus a loved national comedian popped in every hour to provide some much appreciated humour!
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Also happy with the results. You did good America.

We watched ABC on and off and what I kept noticing was Barbara Walters…sitting at the end of the desk….and saying nothing. Why did they have her there?? :) I would like to submit this for an award! haha

Same here! I really loved that he was zooming into the counties and going back and forth between years so fluidly. I’m sure having the technology helped, but he was very comfortable with it and very informative.

What you americans should have done then is voted in a Democratic congress. Compared to the amount of people that voted, America has waaaay more eligible voters who just did not vote. So at the next election those who are pissed at the way things stand, get more people to vote, more republicans or democrats would mean a greater chance of the congress being unanimous in either way. Stop complaining, and do something about it.

We did do something, the only thing we could do – VOTE!! It wasn’t enough, too many people voted who get all the “free” stuff Obama’s been handing out for 3 years. All the people on the “Obama Entitlement Program” out-numbered the people who are not part of that handout program :(

What really happened is that after the 2010 elections the GOP managed to gerrymander most of their districts into safe GOP seats. Overcoming that is going to be a uphill battle. But maybe this time the GOP congress won’t hold the country hostage again since their goal of making Obama a one-term president didn’t work out.

It’s not an excuse it’s the truth. They went in and point-blank said they didn’t care WHAT Obama proposed they were going to say no – all so they could try and get back the White House. Canor, McConnley & Boehner all admit to it. They and the Republican party betrayed the country in the name of politics and power. They weren’t trying to help the country succeed, they were trying to make it FAIL so Obama would look bad. The fact that Obama got anything done at all is a testimony to his sheer determination to get the country out of the mess George W. Bush left the country in. http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/

Well they have a right to say no and 49% of the country agrees. Obama should not take this election as an affirmation of his presidency. He got less electoral votes than last time. He needs to take this as a message that to get things done, EVERYONE will need to come to the middle. Not just the Republicans.

You, too, beckstle, about those in the Republican party who said they were going to block the President at every turn. Let’s hope that kind of unreasonable attitude will end in the second term. The country needs to pull together if it’s going to succeed. The President has to compromise on his economic plan, but that doesn’t mean turn it over to the Republicans. There has to be some middle ground.

States either legalizing gay marriage or shooting down state amendments that would’ve banned gay marriage were also a big, much needed move forward, I’d say. I’m absolutely thrilled at the results for that topic.

Matthew Dowd on ABC News saying, “This may be the last election between two white men.” Barack Obama is African-American. He was corrected/made an ass of by Jake Tapper and laughed at by everyone in-studio after awkward silence.

To all who are relishing in your victory last night, where is the outrage over the comments by one of your own? Chris Matthews of MSNBC reflecting on the Obama victory, “”I’m so glad we had that storm last week,”. When he realized how offensive that sounded (even to Rachel Maddow), he continued, “No, politically I should say — not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics.”

It’s curious how you break out Maddow – who, being a homosexual person, is a humanist before many other things, and is most likely to be offended MOST. Matthews certainly stuck his foot in his mouth and chewed on that one, though.

I kept switching between all the channels and finally settled on CNN. They did the best job with graphics and information and I liked that they showed what happened in the last four elections. I still really miss Tim Russert (Meet the Press 18 years) and wish he had lived to provide commentary on the past two elections. But I know he had the best seat in heaven to watch both.